E-Books →Early Modern English Noblewomen and Self-Starvation

The first study of its kind, the book adopts an interdisciplinary and highly detailed approach to examining women's self-starvation between 1500 and 1640. It is also the first book to focus on this behaviour among noblewomen. Beginning with a contextual outline of gender, food and embodiment in early modern culture, the book then looks explicitly at the food behaviour of several well-known figures, including Elizabeth I, Catherine of Aragon, Mary I, Arbella Stuart, and Katherine Grey. Each case study engages with a variety of primary sources, such as letters and legal documents, as well as with literary texts, providing an in-depth exploration of the relationship between self-starvation and concepts of autonomy, sexuality, and literal and symbolic imprisonment, highlighting the body and specifically the act of eating as fundamental to identity in the early modern period and today.
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